PaoloNuevo

If Aion doesn't always mean endless or absolute then the "eternal things" in 2 Cor. 4: 18 and the "eternal redemption" in Hebrews 9 are temporary, and the reality of the thigns to come are unreliable and unstable if Aion is temporary...

1 Timothy 2:3-4 ...God our Savior; Who will have all men to be saved...John 12:47 And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.Romans 4:5 But to the one who does not work, but believes in the one who declares the ungodly righteous ...

If Aion doesn't always mean endless or absolute then the "eternal things" in 2 Cor. 4: 18 and the "eternal redemption" in Hebrews 9 are temporary, and the reality of the thigns to come are unreliable and unstable if Aion is temporary...

Don't shoot me but..... IMO the word aion simply is a poor translation of olam, and it(aion) gets way too much attention. As we all kno, aion is a period with a definite beginning and end. olam simply means "unknown" or "beyond the horizon". It also included in some uses the meaning of "the other world". When describing the sons of God who went into the daughters of men, it described their progeny as "men of old"(way back, farther back than we can see). It was, in the OT more or less given more concrete parameters by the object that accompanied it.

I am sorry, but I cannot ascribe to the frequently stated fairy tale that the Greek language is so "specific". Both the Hebrew and the Greek languages have many words that only find meaning in context- meanings that can change with context. Olam is a prime example. The idea that how a Greek guy like Plato used the word "aion" or "aionian" should bear on what Jesus or Paul meant when they spoke the word "olam" doesn t work so well for me and in my opinion is not one of the stronger arguments in the UR arsenal. When "olam" accompanies the traits of God Almighty it means, again, IMO forever. I am not any kind of expert on the Hebrew language, but to me, based on the evidence I have seen- its just common sense.

PaoloNuevo

When "olam" accompanies the traits of God Almighty it means, again, IMO forever. I am not any kind of expert on the Hebrew language, but to me, based on the evidence I have seen- its just common sense.

Yes!

But he said we shouldn't compare Olam as used in the OT because the OT wasn't written in Koine Greek and in the NT, the usages of Aion (if it still means Olam in Hebrew) aren't necessarily the same...

but I have no problems treating Eonian as "belonging to eternity" rather than "lasting through it."

My view is that translation is about the core meanings of the speakers in their time and from their minds. I don't believe Jesus spoke Koine Greek, I believe He spoke Hebrew or Aramaic. Regardless, since almost everything Jesus said was already written in the OT somewhere or another, I think His core meanings/definitions/thought streams were all Hebraic, not Greek. Therefore I think OT "olam" is still the key to understanding aion/aionian. The inherent philosophical opposition within the Greek language may be simply unavoidable, especially when the translators are using the Greek philosophers for usage comparisons and to arriive at the meanings of words. A good example of this the way the baggage of Greco Roman mythology forced its way through the words Inferno(Vulgate) and Hades(Greek) into the Norse word "Hel" which was strangely used to translate the word Sheol. Altho that baggage could reasonably be transferred to "Gehenna", there is really no excuse for doing it with Sheol and to me this is evidence of a strong disposition to spread theological preferences through translation. i think the same translators who perpetrated that insult to the truth did so in some other less conscious ways. Lastly :o), I think that since the core issue in translation is the meaning of the writer/speaker in his mind, in his time- historical context is important and scriptural context decisive.